Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Read by Bill
CLASSIC
FICTION
NA402612D
Bailey
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Call me Ishmael
The Spouter Inn
Queequeg
Breakfast among whalers
Nantucket
The Pequod
The Prophet
Knights and Squires
Ahab
The Quarter Deck
Moby Dick
Hark!
The first lowering
The chase
The Spirit-Spout
Squid
Sperm whale
Stubb’s Supper
Cutting in
Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale
The China seas
Piratical Malays
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5:58
6:20
6:52
2:40
6:19
8:43
8.01
6:16
6:16
10:40
7:45
2:14
6:22
8:14
7:13
7:03
9:09
5:03
5:38
7:05
2:49
6:06
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The Grand Armada
A charmed existence
The Castaway
The Tryworks
Wrapped in darkness
Queequeg in his Coffin
The Forge
The Candles
The Needle
The Rachel
Ahab’s Soliloquy
The sighting
The Chase: First Day
The power of Moby Dick
The Chase: Second Day
The boiling maelstrom
The Chase:Third Day
Fedallah The Parsee
Swift vengeance
Epilogue
6:36
8:57
6:10
4:59
8:03
7:13
8:30
7:06
8:31
7:09
10:11
6:53
5:25
5:36
7:11
6:56
5:48
8:32
5:12
2:21
Total time: 4:43:39
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Herman Melville
Moby Dick
he wrote a series of successful ‘sea
romances’ based on his experiences in the
Pacific. Moby Dick was the most ambitious.
It was long, digressive and crammed with
whaling knowledge and whale-fishery lore
but it was not an immediate success.
Moby Dick explored ‘the power of
Blackness’, the darker side of human nature
and fate, primarily through the figure of
Ahab – a marked man. In an age of
optimism, such vistas proved unsettling for
readers. Just as the novel form was
becoming characterized by psychological
realism, naturalism and coherence of plot,
Melville produced a book with few
concessions to these expectations. It is only
in the twentieth century that the book has
become acknowledged for its unique
qualities. Moby Dick, perhaps, anticipates
some of the concerns of many modern
writers: fragmented plot, a malign or
indifferent universe, experimentation with
form.
The two major figures are Ishmael and
Ahab. Both are outcasts – Ishmael is tired of
a petty city life, and Ahab is alienated by his
At the age of twenty, dissatisfied with his
prospects as a school teacher, Herman
Melville joined a whaling ship as a
harpooner bound for the Pacific whaling
grounds. He was away for four years and
experienced mutiny, being left ashore on
Polynesian islands to live amongst cannibals,
as well as service on other vessels. Many of
these real-life perilous experiences became
the material for his masterpiece Moby
Dick.
In Moby Dick the outcast Ishmael, like
Melville himself, enlists on a whaling voyage
and finds himself on a ship rapidly
dominated by the brooding presence of
Ahab who seeks nothing but the
destruction of the mythical white whale of
the Southern fishing grounds. Through
Ishmael’s eyes, we watch the wild and
reckless crew gradually subdued and finally
almost hypnotized by Ahab’s towering sense
of purpose and implacable revenge.
Herman Melville was born in 1819 in
New York into a family of Dutch descent.
Debt haunted his parents and as a young
man Melville took to sea. After his return,
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through many of the dangers described in
Moby Dick, worked as an inspector for
the New York customs and died largely
forgotten in 1891. In 1924, Billy Budd, a
manuscript which was discovered in his
desk after his death, was published, and
since then Melville’s reputation has steadily
increased so that he is now widely
regarded as one of the giants of American
literature.
embittered need for vengeance. Both
confront the ‘monsters of the deep’ in the
oceans and in themselves: Ishmael watches
and speculates; Ahab acts on his beliefs.
These two perspectives provide an evershifting focus and an immense richness.
After Moby Dick, which did much to
undermine his literary reputation at the
time, Melville once again broached new
ground: he published Pierre, a novel
exploring incest which effectively ended his
career as a writer. For the remainder of his
life, this man, who had hunted whales
Notes by Sonia Davenport
Cover picture: The Chase of the Bow-Headed Whale, Clifford W. Ashley.
Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library.
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The music on this recording taken from
the NAXOS and MARCO POLO catalogues
RESPIGHI SINFONIA DRAMMATICA
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Nazareth
8.220418
BRAHMS HAYDN VARIATIONS
BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels, Alexander Rahbari
8.550278
BRAHMS Tragic Overture
BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels, Alexander Rahbari
8.550281
BALAKIREV KING LEAR OVERTURE ETC.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Choo Hoey
8.220324
DVOŘÁK IN NATURE’S REALM
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Gunzenhauser
8.550600
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Moby Dick
Read by Bill Bailey
The Nantucket whaling ship, the Pequod, spirals the globe in search of
Moby Dick, the mythical white whale of the Southern Oceans. Driven on
by the obsessive revenge of Captain Ahab, the crew and the outcast
Ishmael find themselves caught up in a demonic pursuit which leads
inexorably to an apocalyptic climax.
“The novel’s excitement is stoked by music.
Bill Bailey’s reading has a vigorous ’thar she blows’ quality.”
THE SCOTSMAN
CD ISBN:
978-962-634-026-4
View our catalogue online at
www.naxosaudiobooks.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE,
BROADCASTING AND COPYING OF THESE COMPACT DISCS PROHIBITED.
p 1995 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. © 1995 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.
Made in Germany.
Bill Bailey was born and raised in North Carolina, USA,
and moved to the UK more than 20 years ago. He has
appeared many times in London’s West End and with
the National Theatre. UK TV credits include such classic
English series as Poirot, Jeeves and Wooster, Drop the
Dead Donkey, Yes Prime Minister, and as a regular in
the BBC 2 series Tygo Road. His feature films, both in
the UK and Hollywood, include Superman II, Yanks,
The Omen, Ishtar, Reds and Haunted Honeymoon.
Abridged by Sonia Davenport. Produced by Nicolas Soames.
Post-production: Simon Weir, The Classical Recording
Company
Engineer (speech): Alan Smyth, Bucks Audio Cassettes
Herman Melville
Total time
4:43:39